Trolling the Web

If I did have a working links section, then I’d use it to post stuff like the following:

Lore Sjoberg started updating his website again, including this comic strip which I’m convinced that my laughing at will somehow result in my eternal damnation.

That site is also the first I heard of Twink, the “toy piano band,” which is cool stuff for anybody who liked The Carl Stalling Project and/or electronic music. My favorite is The Broken Record, which samples from vintage children’s records. Just about every review I’ve read has a line about its making you laugh out loud at least once, but I’ve got to say it’s true — what gets me is “Alphabent.” Their stuff is on the iTunes Music Store if you’re not into hunting it down, but of course you don’t get the bunny rabbit book.

Wandering around Flickr led to Adam Koford.com. I really like his drawings of Hell, Adoption, and a monkey with a wrench.

Oh yeah, I knew I was forgetting something: Some helpful people on a message board reminded me the name of a toy I had from the early 80s, Parker Bros’ MERLIN. I’d been thinking of it because all the robot-vacuum-beeping was reminding me of something, but I couldn’t figure out what. Turns out this guy wrote a Merlin simulator for Windows, and he put the original instruction manual on his site (check the Downloads section). Unfortunately, the simulator doesn’t have sound effects as far as I can tell, so there’s no point to the music game. But the other games work, and are a good bit of nostalgia. And a reminder that the thing was a lot cooler as a Space Phone or a Space Car for my action figures than it was as an electronic game.